Telecommunication technologies have evolved from analog to digital technologies, and continues to evolve from circuit switched to packet switched, from connection oriented packet switching to connectionless packet switching, and from narrow band application to broadband applications. The accompanied evolution in telecommunication technologies has significantly advanced operators' capability to offer broadband, IP-based multimedia services ranging from entertainment and lifestyle applications such as mobile TV and mobile payment to professional services such as video conferencing and real-time data exchange.
IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) defines an architectural framework for the deployment of IP multimedia services. IMS defines how these services connect and communicate with the underlying telecommunications network(s) and how they integrate with the network provider's back-end systems. IMS combines voice and data in one packet switched network such as, for example, the GPRS core network and the LTE core network, to offer network controlled multimedia services. Various Internet Protocols (IPs) such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) are widely utilized for delivery of various forms of multimedia applications over IP networks. SIP is an end-to-end application layer signaling protocol that is utilized to setup, modify, and teardown multimedia sessions such as audio/videoconferencing, interactive gaming, virtual reality, and call forwarding over IP networks. UDP and TCP are transport layer protocols that are used for data delivery over IP networks. TCP guarantees data delivery and integrity, however, UDP does not exclusively guarantee delivery of data. RTP is the Internet protocol which transmits real-time data such as audio and video data. RTP does not exclusively guarantee real-time delivery of data, but it does provide mechanisms for the sending and receiving applications to support streaming data.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.